Proto:Rayman 2: The Great Escape/Early Demo Version
This article refers to the first PC demo released from Rayman 2. It can be downloaded from here: http://www.fileplanet.com/23184/download/Rayman-2-Demo This demo features two levels from The Fairy Glade, but only one is normally playable due to a bug. It also doesn't have any music or sound. A second revision of the demo was made later (with the same levels), adding sound, fixing the jail counter, fixing the crashing bug, fixing some strings, reordering the intro animation, and using the non-rechargeable fist. This second revision uses the early rayman model (with one eye more open than the other) for some reason. The Fairy Glade only included 2 Parts, between Part 3 and 4. The crashing bug Despite two levels being present in this demo, only one level can be played normally. After completing the first level, the game crashes. A workaround was discovered to play the second level: *While playing first level, we minimize the game with Alt + Tab. *We restore the game, now it would have untextured models. *We finish the first level. *Now, Level 2 will start normally with textures again. General Differences * The loading screen image and HUD elements have a lower resolution than in the final. Black color is used as alpha channel making some elements like the jail in the pause menu be incorrectly show. * The "J" key used for showing the HUD at anytime in the final version doesn't works in this demo version. * Pause menu has a different background texture and it has temporary strings. Cancel is the abandon option (Changed to "exit" in the second revision of the demo). Polokus masks are not collected. * Character icons on dialogues are in a color square. * Strings (used and unused) are slightly different from final, and has some mistakes. *The key code translation from the strings is temporary, for example, the character of the arrows changing in this demo version is translated to the string "ALL", and the jump bottom translation is the "Q'''" letter while the real jumping button in this beta and final version is the "A" key. * As the First Demo, the string '''The Hall of Doors called Mapmonde. Kindly because the string has different with old Demo, some changes: *Rayman falls into the level after the Robo-Pirate animation in the first demo, instead of afterwards like in the final version. *The total amount of cages show 0 in the first demo, instead of 7 like in the final version. Cages can however still be broken and will result in it showing 1/0 etc. *The heads-up display can't by triggered to show by pressing "J". *The transparency doesn't work on all textures. *Rayman starts with the upgraded fist from the Canopy. *The Hall of Doors uses the French name "Mapmonde". *In this demo, Rayman has the rechargeable fist obtained in a later level. However, the color of the stars when it bounces and when its recharged is white. The stars when collecting a yellow lum are also white. *The game over animation seems disproportionate when playing at a resolution that's not 640 x 480. *The piranha animation starts when it starts jumping, instead of the middle air. As a consequence, its animation finishes before, making it less real. *Rayman can grab to a floor through the bars. This glitch was fixed in final version. Level Differences * In this demo version, Rayman falls into the level after the pirate animation, while in final, Rayman falls before the pirate animation. This was changed in the second demo revision * In this demo version, the barrels thrown by the pirate reaches the start of the tunnel through the ceiling. This was fixed in final version. * The Fairy Glade Lum total is 50 like in the final, but the jail total is set to 0. If a jail is broken (There are 2 in the first level), the HUD will show you 1/0 jails and 2/0 jails. This was fixed in the second demo revision. Unused Content Beta Strings Despite the demo only containing two levels being, the demo includes strings from the full game, including dialogues, level names, and menus. This strings are slightly different from final! Download here. Inside this strings, we can also see some cut menu options, like Antialising, Sharpness and Cheat. Final game textures There are lots of textures from the final game in Textures.cnt that aren't used in this demo. However, not all the final textures are present. Debug Charset On main folder, we can see a debugging character set in the file Polices.tga Sound Script While this game has no sound, there's a working sound script file in BinData/World/Sound/ folder for a different sound engine from what was used in the final version. It has the following header: ; SND XXX ; Sound Script Saver ( CPA Compatible) ; © Ubi Sound Studio 1998 {LcbHeader: SetDefaultLanguage() VersionNumber(916) SetNextFreeGroupId%lu(102) } VersionNumber(916) This script tries to play BNM sound files that doesn't exist in the demo files (it doesn't play APM music files). If we enable sound in the Snd_Cpa.ini configuration file (it's disabled by default), and then copy Bnk_0.bnm with the final game sounds to BinData/World/Sound/. Sounds will play, but almost all of them will be incorrect, as the sound file might been altered from that point of development until the final version. Copying all the final game sound files to the demo sound folder makes the demo crash. Debug Features Level selector Pressing F9 will enable a level selector which displays Change To Map : Bast_20 at the upper-left corner of the screen with the debug charset. Pressing up/down you can switch to Bast_22(The second part of the level) and pressing space you can access it (You must do the previously mentioned workarround before to prevent the game to crash). You can cancel the level selection by pressing A'''. You can also reset the actual level at any moment by pressing '''F11 log files Running the demo generates an Error.log and test.log files. The first one logs lots of messages from the game libraries, while the second just logs Can't change to map 'menu': not found in map list HTML memory dump There's a very complex HTML memory dump generator routine at that generates a HTML file called MemoryDump.html at the Game folder. It can be triggered at level start by setting the byte to a non-zero value. Demo recording There is a debug byte at that seems to enable some demo feature when it changes to 1. However, it actually crashes the game. Changing this byte value to 2 resets the actual level and sets the byte value again to 0. Unused code for a demo recording feature still exist at which would print the string RECORD . There's also lots of demo recording related strings: Demos.log \Demo%03d.sav Demos\%s\%02d Frame = %ld : POS%ld ALW%ld SCT%ld ACT%ld CAN%ld Demo Images Apart from the second level, there are 6 demo images in BinData/Vignette/ folder (3 for English, 3 for French) that can be seen when completing the second level. Category:Windows Games